On October 19, Larnarda Blackmon, a nine-year employee in HRSA’s Division of Management Services, was awarded a bachelor of science degree in business management from the University of Phoenix at a graduation ceremony in Constitution Hall in downtown Washington.

Blackmon completed his four-year course of studies in three years, working full time at HRSA as he studied. On an average week he worked four 10-hour days, from 6 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Twice a week he went to class at the university’s Greenbelt, Md., campus near his home in Laurel from 6 to 10 p.m.

“I’d get home about 10:30, 10:45, just in time to go to bed and get up at 4:30 to be back at HRSA by 6,” Blackmon told Inside HRSA.

“Every week I usually had two individual papers to write and two team papers to contribute to and edit,” he said. “I tried to get my school work done at home on the spare week nights to be able to spend the weekends with my two girls, now 20 and 17.”

Blackmon said he had been out of school for 23 years before enrolling in 2005.

Larnarda Blackmon